I didn't set out to build software. I set out to be better at my job.

The reality

Notebooks, spreadsheets, and good intentions

I'm a retail field leader. I run stores. I drive between them every week, walk the floor, talk to my teams, and try to make each location a little better than the last time I was there.

For years, my system for tracking all of that was a notebook in my passenger seat. Sometimes a spreadsheet. Sometimes a notes app. Sometimes a reminder list. Sometimes an AI chat trying to help me organize my thoughts. The list goes on and on — and none of it worked together. Just the hope that I'd remember what we talked about when I walked back in two weeks later.

I didn't.

Commitments I made to store managers slipped through the cracks. Follow-ups I promised got buried under the next store's problems. I'd walk into a location and the manager would say, “Did you ever look into that thing we talked about?” And I'd have to admit I didn't.

Not because I didn't care. Because the system was broken. Or more accurately — there was no system at all.

The search

I looked for a tool. It didn't exist.

I assumed someone had already solved this. Field leaders — district managers, area managers, regional directors — there are tens of thousands of us running stores across the country. Surely somebody had built an app for the way we actually work.

What I found instead was a graveyard of workarounds and a landscape designed for everyone except us. Notebooks. Spreadsheets. Notes apps. Reminder lists. AI chats. Voice memos with no structure. The list goes on and on — and none of it was built for what we actually do.

The gap was clear. There was nothing built for a retail field leader who just wants to walk into a store, capture what matters, make commitments, and follow through — all from their phone.

The turning point

If nobody's going to build it, I will.

I don't sit on an IT team. I'm a field leader — my day is spent in stores, not behind a desk. But I knew exactly what this tool needed to be, with a clarity that only comes from living the problem every day.

I'd been designing it in my head for years, every time I lost track of a commitment or walked into a store visit unprepared. So I started building it.

So I built OperatorOS. Not as a startup idea or a tech venture — as the tool I needed to do my job better. Every feature exists because I've felt the pain of not having it. Every workflow mirrors how a real store visit actually unfolds: arrive, observe, talk, commit, follow up.

The difference

Built from the store floor, not a product roadmap

Most retail operations software is designed top-down. Corporate needs visibility, so they build platforms that push tasks to stores and pull reports back up. The field leader is an afterthought — the person the tool happens to, not the person it's built for.

OperatorOS starts with the field leader.

You open the app, you see your stores, your visits this week, your open commitments, and your follow-through rate. That last number — the Commitment Follow-Through percentage — sits right on your dashboard because it's the number that actually matters. Not how many tasks HQ assigned you. How many promises you kept.

You walk into a store and tap one button to start a visit. Write notes, snap photos, add commitments with owners and deadlines, record your conversation and let AI turn it into structured summaries with action items. When you're done, every commitment flows into a tracking system that won't let you forget.

That's it. No implementation consultants. No enterprise procurement. No waiting for IT. Just a field leader with a phone and a better way to work.

What I believe

The principles behind every decision